Iran‘s nuclear program became a challenge 10 years ago. Some parts of the international community, represented by the permanent members of United Nations Security Council and Germany (P5+1), are exposing their concern about possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran is operating on peaceful purposes of its program.
P5+1 has passed several unilateral and multilateral sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, Iran and P5+1 had several rounds of meetings to reach a deal. Iran is seeking two goals.
First, Iran wants P5+1 to recognize and respect its right to have a complete nuclear fuel cycle as a member of NPT.
Second, Iran wants all of the sanctions to be lifted. On the other hand, P5+1 wants to ensure Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful, as declared by Iran. A win-win deal can be defined when the goals of both sides are pursued simultaneously. Otherwise, such a deal is not achievable, according to the long history of negotiations. The sanctions affected ordinary people’s lives in Iran but not its nuclear program — which has advanced considerably during the last ten years. Therefore, neither P5+1 nor Iran has reached their goals. Now, the question is how this challenge can be resolved.
On June 14, Iran experienced a different outcome than the controversial election in June 2009. About 73 percent of Iranians participated in the presidential election, and the majority voted for a moderate candidate with the “key of hope and prudence.”
Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new president, called his foreign policy “charm offensive.” His administration wants to show a new and true face of Iran to the world. President Rouhani truly understood the U.S. played the “key” role in P5+1 and hence accepted bilateral meetings with the U.S. on side meetings with P5+1.
But the U.S. should also show its seriousness in finding a win-win deal. It cannot put a gun on Iran’s head and then ask for negotiations. President Obama used the same reasoning to refuse negotiation with Republicans during the recent government shutdown. In particular, if Congress wants to play the role of bad cop and constantly pass sanctions to enforce Iran to give up its rights, the negotiations will certainly reach stalemate as before.
New talks between Iran and P5+1 started last month in New York and continued last week in Geneva. The “key” of success in the new negotiations is to pursue common goals — not competitive ones. Iran’s new foreign minister announced that Iran has nothing to hide and is ready for full transparency under international regulations, which can guarantee the goal of P5+1.
Now, if P5+1 shows its willingness to Iran’s aforementioned goals, a win-win deal is achievable.
Fortunately, both sides initially agreed on Iran’s road map to pursue the common goals.
Commitment of both sides to this road map and further negotiations about the details can hopefully lead to an equilibrium solution in 2014.
Saeed Ghadimi is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the UF department of industrial and system engineering. This guest column ran on page 7 on 10/28/2013 under the headline "Iran nuclear challenge a win-win?"
